


Eleanor Rigby

by jerseydevious



Series: Revolver [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2019-09-15 19:03:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16938945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: A series of small individual fics cross-posted from my Tumblr.





	1. bruce & clark

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! New fic, because 52 chapters is unwieldy. As usual, none of this is edited, it's mostly to keep my Google Docs clear.

“Ma’s been jonesing for you to come down, Just thought I’d warn you, ‘cause I think one of these days she’s gonna come here and pull you out by your ear.”

Bruce looked up, momentarily, and Clark could tell by the millimeter twitch of his cowl that he was curious, but wasn’t going to say anything. After a brief silence he returned to crafting his popsicle house, using tacky glue, willpower, and apparently magic, because it was turning into a scaled down Wayne Manor at a rapid pace.

“And you got all of these from your trash?” Clark had said, when Bruce returned with two plastic bags full of them. “They can’t be weeks old or you would have taken out the trash.”

Bruce glared at him balefully.

“A week old?” Clark asked.

The glare only sharpened, and without using his x-ray vision, Clark knew that a vein at Bruce’s temple was throbbing with the need to say don’t ask questions, Kent.

Clark spread his hands out in a peaceful gesture. “I’m just saying, it’s a little bit gross if it’s leftover chocolate residue that’s a week old.”

“There is very little that is gross about leftover popsicle sticks,” Bruce said, indignant, in that weird poised way he was indignant. “They are just sticky. Which doesn’t matter, because I am covering them with glue.”

“But they can’t be a week old,” Clark pressed. “You’d have thrown them out.”

Bruce shook the bag out on his desk. “If you absolutely must know, they’re all three days old, approximately. Are you happy now?”

“Holy moly,” Clark said. “How many boxes is that?”

“Four. Don’t tell me you haven’t done it before.”

Clark shook his head. “Uh, no. But it’s funny as heck that you have.”

“Don’t even get started with me, Clark,” Bruce snapped, as he sorted the popsicle sticks out on his desk.

Clark had held up his hands as if he were framing an invisible, old-timey movie sign, and said in his best announcer voice (which truly wasn’t good), “Batman, the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, World’s Greatest Devourer of—”

Bruce then smacked him in the head with a paperweight from his desk drawer.

So that’s how they got to now, with Bruce building a popsicle stick house and Clark trying to write something but mostly messing around with Word fonts. He and Bruce’s unexpected trip to space of the week had landed them in quarantine for some time before they were able to get the antiviral and antibacterial cleanse, a complicated chemical concoction made by a group of League members. Clark had helped with the practical testing, and if he remembered right Bruce had helped somewhere along the line, because although Bruce didn’t have an official degree in anything, he had an unofficial degree in everything.

He and Bruce’s timing was unfortunate, because the zeta beam from the tower went down for routine maintenance just as they were getting out. Truthfully, Clark could have flown them both down. But getting their asses kicked somewhat by an interesting space creature somewhat octopus-like, and then getting swallowed by something much, much bigger and having to stimulate its gag reflex to get out—well. It was exhausting. Bruce had balled up his cape and stuck it under his head and slept through quarantine, even, and he was still moving a bit sluggish.

“Do you think we got good photos of the, uh, not-octopus,” Clark said. “We should’ve gotten some before we killed it. I hate that we’ve got next to nothing to add to the log.”

“We have plenty. Space octopi are untrustworthy.”

Clark sighed. Bruce was a bit of a handful, at times. “You know what I mean.”

“I understand that you have a passion for describing everything in the greater universe that wants to eat us in excruciating detail,” Bruce said.

Clark sighed, again, but this time more pointedly. “You’re hopeless. You can’t judge me, Devourer of an Obscene Amount of Popsicles.”

“I regret ever telling you this,” Bruce said, peering into the guts of his mini-mansion.

Clark grinned. “I mean, here’s the thing. You had four popsicle stick boxes with you, in your fridge, here on the Tower. That means you bought four boxes of popsicle sticks with the intention of stocking your freezer with them. You had to come through the zeta with a Whole Foods bag. And four boxes is a stupid amount of popsicle sticks, even if you don’t eat them all at one time. Now, I’m not no detective, but that seems—”

“I have one miniscule weakness in chocolate popsicles and you choose to exploit it like so,” Bruce said. “Can’t a man have his goddamn popsicles.”

“I just think it’s funny, is all,” Clark said, innocently.

“Do you want a fucking popsicle,” Bruce growled. And if that wasn’t the most absurd thing Clark had ever heard in Bruce’s gravelly voice.

“Yeah, maybe,” Clark said. Bruce gestured to the fridge, and Clark pulled out a pair of pops in the twin bags they came in. Clark snapped them apart and wordlessly passed one to Bruce who indeed took one, but did so with a pout.

“Ooh, these are good,” Clark said. “Anyway. You should come ‘round. Ma’s anxious about you, you know. I know feelings put you into a, ha, freeze—”

“Good God, Clark,” Bruce muttered.

“—but she considers you part of the family. ‘Cause I do. And maybe she can break your crippling chocolate popsicle addiction with chocolate pie.”

Bruce was silent, for a moment, mostly because emotions made him shut down and run a few Windows updates. After a while, he said, “Fuck off, Clark,” which was as good as a yes.

“Hug time,” Clark said, smiling.

Bruce held up a hand to push him off. “No, no—stop it, Clark—”

Then Clark’s arms were around him and the protests died down, and then Bruce’s arms came around and squeezed him back.

What Clark knew was that Bruce was a brother to him in all the ways that mattered; Bruce had saved his life so many times Clark would never pay that debt back, and he knew Bruce felt the same, mostly because after Clark would rescue him he’d be an especially prickly hedgehog for a while. In truth, Bruce meant something near the world to him, and Bruce could read him like a book and Clark could do the same to him—which was how Clark knew that popsicle sticks meant bad days, and chocolate pie meant recovery. 


	2. bruce & clark

He blinked awake, and then almost an instant later there were hands on his wrists like tightened-down bolts, and words were floating to him but he couldn’t tell how far away they were. Could’ve been a mile. Could’ve been a hundred. 

 

The words were drowned out by a sensation in his chest. Clark would say it was like electricity, but lightning was only ticklish, and this—it didn’t make him laugh, he only wanted to crawl out of his own skin to get away from it, and then the sensation was pushing up his chest _ —throat?— _ and—

 

“Easy.” The word floated to him. The ground rushed up beneath him, but he didn’t move an inch. Distantly, he heard coughing, and equally as distant in his mind was the realization that  _ he _ was coughing. “You took a lungful of Kryptonite gas.”

 

“Where,” Clark wheezed, and then something hot and wet bubbled out of his mouth, and then there was a cloth gauze dabbing at it. At some point he’d been leaned back, so he was staring at the sky, instead of the—the dark blur from before. 

 

“A forest,” Bruce said. Clark could just make out the cowl, the cape sprawled out behind him. Of course it was Bruce. “Probably South Carolina. How does your chest feel.”

 

“Weird,” Clark mumbled. 

 

“The Kryptonite gas you inhaled was water vapor and microscopic shavings from a Kryptonite rock,” Bruce said, conversationally. “I need your data on your background radiation readings. I can modify a geiger counter to find—”

 

Clark turned and bent over, coughing blood onto Bruce’s lap. Bruce held him up at the shoulder, one steady port while the world twisted. 

 

“Or,” Bruce said, and his voice had lost none of that conversational tone, “We’ll call Captain Atom.”

 

Clark groaned. “This,” he panted, “doesn’t feel good.”

 

“Of course it doesn’t. You’re a radiation sponge and you just swallowed a cloud of highly radioactive diamond dust.”

 

But for all the dryness of Bruce’s voice, he was mopping the blood and spit off of Clark’s mouth, and he’d produced a water bottle from somewhere and was tipping it into Clark’s mouth. It cooled his throat. 

 

“Don’t need water,” Clark said. 

 

Bruce huffed. “I thought you would appreciate a placebo when you saw one, Clark.” 

 

Then Bruce was pushing himself off the ground, a few glinting batarangs between his fingers. 

 

“Don’t leave,” Clark whined, and maybe it was a little embarrassing to whine like that, but he felt bad enough at the moment that he didn’t particularly care about dignity.    
  


“Calm down,” Bruce groused. “You need more sunlight. Damn Barry. He should’ve brought us to a desert.” 

 

The batarangs sliced through the air—it took a couple for the thicker branches, but eventually Bruce had cleared the canopy above them to let the sunlight pour in. Clark closed his eyes in relief; he’d probably never get enough of feeling the sun when he was exhausted. 

 

Bruce sat down just as Clark was struggling to sit up, and he pulled Clark back to the ground with a tug of red cape. “You need rest.”

 

“I really don’t.”   
  


“Don’t get technical,” Bruce said. “Sunbathing. You need to lie down in front of the sun for a few hours.” 

 

“More like half an hour,” Clark said. 

 

“Pushing it.”


	3. bruce/selina

Selina snapped the window latch shut with a click, rattling it a bit to make sure it was loud enough—the last thing she wanted was to take a punch to the face because she’d been too quiet. She dropped her cat, Angel, onto Bruce’s rumpled comforter, and then leaned the Moet & Chandon Imperial against the footboard.

 

“Honey, I’m home!” she called, toeing off her heels. She’d spent the majority of the evening at a rooftop congregation of soulless glitterati—and years ago those parties had been everything she’d ever dreamed of, elegant and luxurious and poised. The five finger discount had just been part of the high. Now it was the only reason she went at all.

 

She tiptoed around Bruce’s dark room, looking for any sign of him. His room was a mess, currently, because the two of them were adjusting to sharing a space with someone else for the first time—half of Bruce’s clothes were thrown out on the floor because Selina had gone through all of Bruce’s sweaters and thrown out the ones with bloodstains on them, and there was still a cat tower tucked into the corner that needed to be screwed together. And someday, maybe, she'd stop thinking of it as Bruce's room, and maybe think of it as  _ hers. _ Or even  _ theirs. _

 

After turning over the half of the comforter that was flopped on the floor—because sometimes Bruce just preferred the floor, because he was something of a dumbass—Selina unzipped her dress, stepped out of it, unclasped her bra and let it slide to the floor. “I forgot I don’t have a husband,” she muttered, popping open her clutch and snatching out her phone.

 

Bruce picked up on the third ring. “What.”

 

“I know you’re married to Gotham,” Selina said. “But you’ve got two wives now. It’s my turn.”

 

“I’m not patrolling,” Bruce said, as if this were obvious. That asshole had answered his phone on patrol before.

 

Selina groaned. “Don’t tell me that means you’re watching that autopsy right now.”

 

“That was hours ago, Selina.”

 

Selina pulled open one of the drawers in the massive, dark oak chest pressed against the far wall of the bedroom, and hopped around as she worked on a pair of Bruce’s socks. “That _ —hup— _ doesn’t make it not gross.”

 

“It’s for justice.”

 

Selina rifled through the next drawer down. “Hey, which are your favorite pajama pants?”

 

“The Nightwing ones. But you would like the red better. They’re softer.”

 

Selina’s heart jumped a bit, because there was something infinitely cute about Bruce’s favorite pajama pants being a birthday present from his son. “You look good in red. You should wear more red.”

 

Bruce was quiet for a minute, as if he were seriously considering it, and then said, “I like black.”

 

Selina rolled her eyes. She dropped the phone on the dresser to pull up the red plaid pants, and rolled over the waistband half a dozen times so they’d stay up and she wasn’t dragging a mile of fabric behind her. “Shirt or hoodie?”

 

“I have clothes down here,” he said, flatly.

 

“They’re cold and I’m not going to cuddle with you if you’re cold,” Selina said. “Maybe we should take a shower.”

 

Bruce pointedly didn’t say anything, which could have meant  _ no one’s home and no one’s going to notice if we spend an hour and a half in the shower _ or _ tonight I’m going to sleep on the armchair in the den because secretly on the inside I am sixty-five. _ Frustrating man.

 

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she said.

 

When she did get to the Cave she was glad for her forethought on the sock front, because Bruce had these nice, thick wool socks and a very damp, miserable cave, and somehow he never wore the socks but was always in the cave.

 

“And you’re skipping our honeymoon for this,” Selina said, gesturing at the manilla folder Bruce had spread before the monitor. At least he hadn’t been staring at it, though, when she got here, just reclined back with his heels propped on the desk and his eyes closed. “A hatchet straight through the face. That’s a gory one.”

 

“Right through the side of the jaw,” Bruce said, jerking a hand back further into the Cave’s lab. “The x-rays are back there. Completely shattered. But not a killing blow, and delivered after—”

 

Selina reached out and flicked him on the ear. “We can do this tomorrow,” she said, “when I have my best suit on. But I did not go to a party to steal Balthazar champagne so we could solve a murder all night.”

 

Bruce grunted. “It’s not our honeymoon. We haven’t gotten married yet. We’ve been engaged two weeks.”

 

She leaned against the desk and poked him in the chest with her socked foot. “We’ve got everything but the fancy marriage certificate,” Selina said. “And you just know how much stock I put in certificates. My last death certificate was expertly forged.”

 

Bruce snorted. “Fine. I’ll be up in a minute.”

 

“Then I’ll be down here a minute.”

 

Bruce shook his head. “I just need to go back there and pull the x-rays down.”

 

Selina caught his eyes, then—there had been one picture that had made it to the papers of Batman sprawled in the street after Bane had tossed him down like a common piece of trash, and in it, Batman’s leg had been pulled entirely out of socket, his knee twisted so that his ankle was in line with his chest, pelvis cracked through like a broken dinner plate. Broken bat. So she poked his left knee, and then Bruce groaned like he’d been stabbed.

 

“You twisted it, didn’t you.” She picked up his ankles and eased his legs to the floor. When she looked up, Bruce was breathing hard and had a flush to his cheeks, and his eyes and brows were pinched together in a way that was new to her. It took Selina a moment to realize it was pain.

 

“It’s—hhn,” Bruce breathed. He still wasn’t breathing deeply, and his hand raised and started going through motions. Her sign language was still rusty, because Bruce had only started teaching her recently as a way to talk with Cass, but what she got amounted to _ tripped.  _ Which didn’t make sense, because Batman didn’t trip.

 

“You’ll have to undo your belt for me,” Selina said. “I’m not risking getting shocked by that thing.”

 

Bruce huffed, and undid the clasp, and tossed it at her. She caught it like it was priceless china and slid it as delicately as she could on the desk, because no matter how careless Bruce was with it, it still didn’t change the fact that she had no idea what was in those pockets, except that it could probably take out a city block.

 

“Brace,” he finally rasped. “I keep one down here. It’s—by the clothes.”

 

She jogged to the small closet carved into the rock wall of the medbay, and, sure enough, there was a knee brace inside, a monstrous looking thing with a stiff lock on either side of where the knee was supposed to go.

 

“I didn’t know you had one of these,” she said, and for some reason there was something sick writhing in her belly, something that whispered  _ you’re going to marry this man, aren’t you? _

 

“There’s two,” Bruce said, gesturing with his hand to somewhere vaguely upward. “One for—upstairs.”

 

Selina hefted it over her shoulder and walked all the way back, dropping it on the desk. She kneeled in front of him. “You don’t have to worry,” she said, faux-comforting. “I’ve already seen your Superman boxers.”

 

Bruce huffed a laugh, and helped her gently work off his boots and the layer of kevlar beneath them.

 

“You’ll have to show me how this works.”

 

“Just adjust—the straps.”

 

Eventually they got the brace on (“You have to do more than grunt, I don’t know whether that’s yes or no!”) and Selina rolled up his Nightwing-patterned pants and Bruce pulled the armor from his chest. For a moment, he sat there, eyes closed, chest bare—she could see the long line where Bruce’s ribs had been replaced with a titanium cage, and the girded lines of old skin grafts and the ropey scar tissue crawling over him like bumps indicating mountain ranges on a globe. It was a quiet little secret that she would never share, because it felt twisted to say it out loud, but there was something Selina loved about Bruce’s scars—something about knowing that even though hell and the kitchen sink had been thrown at Bruce, he always marched through the fire with that grim look on his face. Sometimes Selina ran her hands over him at night while he slept, feeling for the pockmarks and ridges that were proof that, no matter the odds, Bruce would beat them.

 

“Getting up is the hard part,” Bruce said. “I can walk. But it can’t bend.”

 

“You can do it,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Up, up.”

 

She pulled on his arm and he rose a quarter of the way and sank back down, eyes pinched shut. Something needled her in the side about the tightness in his face that wasn’t going away. “Harder,” he groused.

 

She wrapped two hands around his. Before she started pulling, she said, “This is why you should lay off stealing my ice cream,” just to hear that huff of a laugh again.

 

Selina managed to get him upright for half a second before Bruce’s face twisted and he choked out, “Trash can.”

 

She dropped him back into the chair and pulled the small trash can beneath the desk with her foot. She shoved it under Bruce’s nose in the nick of time.

 

After it looked like he was mostly done, and was just leaning forward with his forehead hanging on the rim, Selina said, “You should’ve told me if it hurt that bad.”

 

“Not pain,” Bruce wheezed. “S’nothing.”

 

Selina pulled the trash can out of his arms and dropped it on the floor with a clatter. Then she pressed two fingers against Bruce’s chin and raised it so he couldn’t look away. “I know you can lie,” she said. “But I didn’t know you can lie that badly.”

 

Bruce sighed. His slipped shut again so Selina moved her hand to cup his cheek, and he leaned into it with a soft noise. “The… medicines I take. The—dose was moved higher. Nausea.”

 

“How bad did you twist your knee when you fell,” she said.

 

“Guess.”

 

“You’ve got a wheelchair down here, right?”

 

Bruce jerked away from her and growled, “I am not getting in that goddamn chair.”

 

“Bruce,” Selina said, dropping her hand. “If you fall over while I’m holding you up, you’re taking us both down.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything, but he did look disgruntled in that way he did when he was wrong and knew it. Selina rubbed the slate gray hair behind his ear and said, “Where is it?”

 

“Same closet. The one with the paint on it.”

 

She rolled it over and propped it open and, true to his words, it was covered almost completely in layers of chipping and cracking paint.

 

“There’s a beautiful galaxy on the back of your wheelchair.”

 

Bruce huffed another laugh. “That one’s Damian’s. He stayed with the Kents, during the summer, and—reportedly—he and Jon beat Mario Galaxy twice. He was asking me to go to the moon again for weeks.”

 

For a moment Selina was just going about wiping dust off the leather seat, as if there was nothing wrong with that statement, and then that last word wiggled into her brain and she spluttered, _ “Again?” _

 

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “The Batcave. The one on the moon.”

 

Selina stared at him. “You have a Batcave on the moon.”

 

Bruce nodded.

 

“If we don’t have our honeymoon  _ on the moon _ we’re getting divorced.”

 

Bruce snorted. “I don’t think you’d like the moon. There’s nothing to do.”

 

“There’s you,” she said. Selina had never imagined their honeymoon would be anything other than the two of them in a king size bed, with a couple bottles of champagne and a few boxes of chocolate-dipped strawberries, anyway.

 

“That’s not much,” Bruce said, an ugly twist to his mouth.

 

Selina pushed the Batcomputer’s bat-keyboard aside and hopped on the desk, crossing her arms over Bruce’s overworn Gotham Bulls t-shirt. “And what does that mean?”

 

“I had a hip replacement at forty,” Bruce said, as if that were damning proof of something, and not just stupidly confusing. Frustrating man.

 

“And last week you ripped Croc’s jaws off of someone’s leg with your bare hands. I don’t think the hip replacement is slowing you down.”

 

Bruce looked away from her and down at the ground. The ugly twist to his mouth had gotten uglier, but he didn't say anything, just kept staring.

 

Selina raised her foot and poked him in the chest with it. "What's this about, huh?"

 

Bruce caught her foot, bare hands absently rubbing her calf. "You didn't ask. About the meds that I take."

 

_ It's not my business,  _ was what jumped to her mind. But that was a lie, now, because they were engaged and suddenly their business was each other's business—suddenly his room was their room, and that was the life they had chosen.

 

Evidently she didn't reply fast enough, because Bruce continued. "Bipolar disorder. The dosage I have to take just to sleep half the night could kill a child."

 

Selina tilted her head. "You skip that one a lot, don't you."

 

He chuckled. "Maybe."

 

Selina wriggled her toes at him. "This marriage thing is weird. We share a lot of things, now. And it's not only you and Alfred that should know how that works, because we're married. But right now you look like you're waiting for me to cut your throat open."

 

Bruce's laugh was bitter. "You will," he said. "Figuratively. When you walk out. Which you will, because you'll realize at some point that there isn't a piece of me that's not ruined in some way."

 

Selina jerked back like she'd been hit. "Are you seriously expecting me to think you're  _ ruined? _ I think I'm pretty convinced that you could be set on fire and have your ashes dumped into the ocean and at some point, you crawl out and say something cute about justice before kicking everyone's ass."

 

Bruce rolled his eyes. "That's not true."

 

"You know when I fell in love with you," she said. "When I knew that I was in love with you. There was a girl on the street, sobbing because she'd lost her mom, and she told me she couldn't go to the police because her mom told her not to—because mom's got happy pills. I was undercover, scoping out a place for a job. But I saw that girl, and I remembered the person that had—I remembered the person that wouldn't abandon a girl like that. That wouldn't abandon Holly. I unmade me, because I hated me, but holy  _ shit _ if I thought I hated myself then, I had no idea what was coming. I housed this girl for a couple days until her mom showed up, and then after she'd gone home, I went  _ maybe Batman would've been proud of that. _ You can't tell me you're ruined when you unruin people."

 

Bruce's eyes had fallen back on the ground, so Selina kept going. "You know what? There's not beautiful suffering. There's no good pain. Pain doesn't make you better, you make you better. Pain makes it harder to choose better, and you've got a lot of that. You're in pain right now! You've got a whole laundry list of reasons to say no, not feeling it, and you don't, because... you're you. And you're good. And it's the kind of good you can't ruin."

 

Bruce was still as a stone and barely breathing. Selina slid off the desk and walked around the chair, so she could drape herself over Bruce's shoulders and press a kiss into his hair. It smelled like salt and sweat and leather from the cowl. "So let's go upstairs," she murmured. "I'm going to help you get into that chair and then onto the bed. I'm chugging champagne. You're getting ginger ale. We'll watch, uh,  _ Sex and the City _ or something, and we're cuddling. And it'll be the best damn honeymoon."

 

She stood like that, draped over him, face pressed into his hair, for nearly ten minutes before he rasped, "Selina."

 

"Yes, baby?"

 

"Do you ever want chocolate precisely when you can't eat it."

 

Selina laughed so hard she could barely breathe. But she could hear the unsaid words—the silent _ I love you _ in the way his voice was warm and the silent  _ thank you _ in the way his voice was soft. 

 

Frustrating fucking man.


	4. bruce & dick

He woke up to a slowness, an aching that spread through him and seemed to leak out from poisonous bones. Bruce sat up and cracked his neck and ran a hand through his hair and checked his watch and then, he seemed to slow, that ugly blackness slinking forward, breathing into him; breathing was a challenge. His ribcage had petrified in his chest while he slept and now the slow  _ up-down up-down  _ motion was a debt. Every movement had an equal and opposite price, one that seemed to exist just outside his skull, just outside that slowness that lived in him—that wouldn’t stop—that could not breathe as humans do and did not live as humans did—

 

Alfred flicked open the curtains at nine thirty. “Top of the morning,” he said, dryly. 

 

Bruce’s response fizzled in his chest. It turned into a wordless growl that burbled up his throat and outward. 

 

Alfred looked down at him from the end of the bed. “Ill, sir,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, even if was phrased like one. It was annoying, how Alfred did that, how Alfred just expected—he wasn’t ill. 

 

The brief burst of anger pushed him upwards, had him swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and dropping socked feet to the floor. But when he tried to stand, his knees gave out. 

 

Alfred’s arms were under his in the span of a heartbeat. Bruce’s head slumped forward, into the crook of Alfred’s shoulder. “Dick,” Bruce rasped. “School. I was—”

 

“I took him. You were rather ornery when I attempted to rouse you earlier. I thought it best to do it myself.”

 

Bruce screwed his eyes shut against Alfred’s shoulder and thought,  _ I’m an awful guardian. _ But the thought continued to spiral—he could imagine Dick, years from now, swearing him off, considered the likelihood it was that he’d never see Dick again once Dick decided to cut his losses. Bruce couldn’t corrupt Dick because Dick’s was incorruptible, but he could  _ fail _ him, and failure—Dick’s dead body, heavy in his arms, gunshot wound to the head—or was it the chest? Would it be that Dick hated him, or that Dick would be dead, what would failure taste like on this day, at this time, in this new lifetime?

 

Alfred gentled him back on the bed. “Rest,” he said, simply.

 

Bruce closed his eyes. 

 

-

 

When he woke up, there was a weight on his chest. It was not the same as the weight inside his chest, which settled in like a monstrous python. This weight bounced like a songbird and then chirped, “Good mornin’! Mornin’, mornin’—an’ by mornin’ I mean night. C’mon an’ smell the roses, B.”

 

A hand patted his face. “G’mornin! I said good mornin’! Is this thing on? Y’ello? Is this bat on? Man, if you don’t get up I swear Al’s gonna bust your chops.”

 

“M’ up,” Bruce grunted. 

 

Dick grabbed his face with both hands and kissed Bruce’s forehead. Then he rocked back on Bruce’s chest, snapping his fingers exuberantly. “Hot dog, Bruce! I ain’t seen you all day. Not to be an eager beaver or nothin’ but—but—I missed you.”

 

Dick’s voice got small, and sad at the end. Bruce flicked open his eyes to gray-blue dim light, the beautiful colors of twilight. Dick was looking up, evidently trying to keep tears from falling down his face. 

 

Bruce cupped Dick’s chin with a thumb, tilting Dick’s head down. But Dick’s eyes were still averted. “Sweetheart,” Bruce said, softly, “look at me.” 

 

“You haven’t been around,” Dick mumbled. “Y’haven’t been around, an’ I—well, I’ve been real worried. Real worried. You’re not… sick, are ya?”

 

Bruce’s hand moved to cup Dick’s cheek, and Dick leaned into it like a cat. “I’m not in any danger,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

 

One of Dick’s hands wrapped around Bruce’s wrist. “I love you, Bruce.”

 

_ You shouldn’t, _ Bruce thought. He could name a hundred reasons, a thousand, a million, that Dick should not love him, and it seemed to Bruce that it was almost a crime that he did. Beneath his petrified rib cage was a twisted and manipulative heart, rotten. Maggots must live in his aorta, roaches in the atrium. 

 

“I love you more than anything,” Bruce said. “Now hop off. Batman and Robin are going out tonight.”

 

Dick slid off of Bruce’s chest and backflipped from the bed. “Yoohoo!” he whooped. “Killer  _ diller,  _ Bruce!” 

 

Bruce’s head fell back and he closed his eyes. 

 

-

 

“—he was just achin’ for a breakin’,” Dick said. “Batman? You listenin’?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said, simply. He eased the Batmobile around a curve—the were nearly to the Cave, now. 

 

“Cruisin’ for a bruisin’, they was,” Dick said, but he wasn’t staring at the windshield. He was staring at Bruce. “Say, B. How ya feelin’?”

 

“I told you earlier not to worry.” 

 

Dick shrugged. “You didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout  _ not _ bein’ sick.”

 

“It’s not serious.”

 

Dick gasped. “Liar, liar, pants on fire! You wouldn’t miss takin’ me to school if you weren’t—”

 

“Robin,” Bruce snarled warningly. “Drop it.”

 

Dick crossed his arms and pulled his legs in the chair with him, staring out the window. Bruce’s heart twisted. He could feel each and every maggot in his aorta, each and every roach in both atriums—the gnawing, the fluttering of legs. He wondered what it looked like for his parents to decompose, in their twin ten thousand dollar caskets. Or had that money paid to keep them beautiful for as long as possible, were they wasting away slow—would Bruce rot first? 

 

Bruce looked back down at Dick. Surely he deserved to, for making a child that precious wrap his arms around his legs like that. “I’m sorry,” Bruce said, roughly. 

 

“Apology accepted,” Dick said. “An’ where was I? Right! As I was saying, Mr. Anglin’ for a Stranglin’ was…”

 

Bruce listened with half an ear until they pulled in the Cave. Dick hopped out of the car immediately, already pulling off his mask. 

 

Bruce pushed open the door and dropped his foot on the ground. He breathed in deep, and pushed himself up, out of the car, dragging his length of chain behind him—he saw stars for a minute and pushed back the cowl, frantically, leaning his head against the Batmobile’s frame and breathing. His length of chain—his length of city—seemed to tighten around his ankles. There would be no moving, without dragging his city through the muck and blood he left behind him—

 

There was the hollow sound of an impact on the metal of a car. A foot bumped him in the shoulder. 

 

Bruce opened his eyes and turned his head, looking up at Dick, who was sitting on the roof of the car, grinning at him. “Love ya, Bruce,” he said, the dimples in his cheeks stretching wide. 

 

Bruce closed his eyes again, because surely, surely, he didn’t deserve—but in moments, a lithe little arm wrapped around his neck, and a cheek pressed against his. Dick’s curls tickled his face. He felt warm in his chest, and his ribs, for the first time that day, moved freely. 

 

Bruce scooped Dick into his arms. Dick’s legs wrapped around his middle, like a little monkey. “I love you,” Bruce rumbled, right next to Dick’s ear. Because this love meant something more to him than the simple concept of deserve—it meant being chosen. It meant chance, a lucky roll of the dice. It meant having a songbird land on your chest, and fighting to stay still. 


	5. bruce & clark & diana

“I have sent Kal a message.”

 

From the bed, Bruce’s brows pinched together in a glare. It would have been more intimidating, if not for the gray weariness of his expression, and the crisp white bandages over his chest. 

 

Diana swatted his hand. “Do not look at me that way, Bruce,” she said. “You know as well as I that he works hard to keep himself apprised of your state.”

 

“My  _ state,” _ Bruce hissed. “My  _ state. _ My state is fine, no thanks to you. I’ll leave in a few hours.”

 

Such words had become almost chorus-like, for Batman, in the recent months —every injury, every ailment was met with harsh steel like a blade. Piercing words. Native to Themyscira were vipers, the length of Diana’s arm, shoulder to fingertip; their scales came in intersecting diamonds of black and vibrant blues and greens. In their venom sacs there was enough to topple a full-grown kanga, or perhaps their natural predators, the jwalleri. Diana had been bitten by one, once, a juvenile. She had felt these piercing fangs, but never had she thought she would hear them. 

 

And yet, in a cold white room the smell of antiseptic, so far from the thick forests and rains of her home she found herself bleeding, if only to herself. 

 

“There is a conversation we must have,” she said. 

 

Bruce’s glare became glacial. “Oh, is there now.” 

 

Diana turned her eyes from his to the gnarled, bruised skin over his knuckles. He jerked his hand away, like her gaze was fire. Let him hide. “I want to have this conversation honestly.”

 

Bruce’s hands were folded over his stomach. He raised one, picked absently at his thumbnail for a moment, and then said, “Someone’s dramatic today.”

 

Diana smiled. “You are one to talk, Batman.”

 

Dramatic—dramatic was not quite the word, for what Batman was on their mission that day. Dramatic was so mundane, so small, so banal. Today Batman had been—he had been—screaming, as the burning talon of a demon the size of a three-story building pierced his chest.  _ Strewth,  _ John Constantine had said, face pale.  _ Get on with the banishment, _ Diana had snarled. What had disturbed her was not the scream. It was that Batman had not moved out of the way. Destructive, maybe, was the word. 

 

Diana unlatched the lasso from her waist at the moment Clark flung open the door. 

 

“What in the Sam hell happened,” Clark said, as if he were out of breath. The effect was emotion-based. Clark could never run out of breath. 

 

Bruce slapped the morphine pump idly. “Mn.”

 

Clark rushed over to Diana’s side, grasping Bruce’s free hand. Bruce tugged his hand away but Clark held on fast. “I leave for three days to—and then there’s a—aw, hell, what happened?”

 

“There was a demon,” Diana said. 

 

Bruce snorted. “The size of a skyscraper. Which is also the size of the hole in my stomach. Now that we have it all cleared up, would either of you consider leaving me alone.”

 

Clark looked at Diana and mouthed  _ I’m sorry about him.  _ Diana shook her head. 

 

Clark turned away from Diana and sighed. “If that’s what you really —”   
  


“Kal,” Diana interrupted. “I have an idea.”   
  


Clark leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Go ahead.”

 

“There is a conversation the three of us need to have. I want to tie us together with the lasso, to have this conversation honestly.”

 

“Can we talk when I’m a whole person,” Bruce growled. 

 

Clark shrugged. “You look like you’re a  _ hole _ person now.”

 

Diana chuckled and Bruce’s face turned glacial. “I hate you,” he said. 

 

Clark patted his shoulder. “Okay, I’m sorry I offended your sensibilities.  _ Super _ sorry.  _ Ha! _ Super sorry, I crack myself up. Anyway. Conversation?”

 

Diana leaned over Bruce, and took his hand. It was warm and rough-feeling in hers. “I do this with your consent,” she said. 

 

“Get it over with,” Bruce snarled. 

 

She looped the lariat around his wrist, and then moved to loop it around Clark’s, and then finally around hers. 

 

“I was five minutes late coming back because I took a detour to fly through Jupiter just to see if I could,” Clark blurted, and his eyes widened. “Christ almighty, I forgot how effective this thing was. I love the smell of bell peppers. I’m really worried about you, Bruce, and it doesn’t help that you keep avoiding me. And I really love the smell of bell peppers. Sorry, I’m thinking about that because Lois promised stir fry when I got back.” 

 

Diana smiled and reached out to touch his shoulder. “I think perhaps the magic of the lasso is most effective on you, Kal.”

 

“I hate magic,” Clark grumbled. 

 

“It is interesting that you mention being worried about Bruce,” she said. “Because I want to vote to take Batman off of active duty.” 

 

Bruce coughed. “I want to vote to punch you in the face but I’d never get that far.” 

 

“That’s… a really big step,” Kal said. 

 

“It’s idiotic, is what it is,” Bruce huffed. “I’m —I’m—I hate—I can’t say anything.”   
  


Diana ran her finger along soft warmth of it, the lasso of truth, made from Gaea’s girdle. “Because you are trying to lie to us.”

 

“I can’t say I hate this stupid rope because it’s a painkiller like nothing else,” Bruce said, and then: “I regret agreeing to this.”

 

Clark frowned. “I don’t. Because I’m worried. You’ve been getting injured a lot, from what Alfred tells me.”   
  


“Alfred talks to you?”   
  
“We share baking recipes, mostly. You only come up when we’re worried.”

 

“Bruce, I think you are overworked,” Diana said. “I think you are exhausted, and making mistakes. I propose you being off active duty for a month at the most. This is in no way permanent.”

 

Bruce cupped his face with his hands. “It’ll need to be longer than a month,” he said, miserably.

 

“Did you just willingly ask for time off,” Clark said, flatly. “Are you dying?” 

 

“Feels like it,” Bruce mumbled. “It’s my spine. It—hurts. I need… surgery.”

 

“Then why the hell are you still in the field?” Clark near-shouted. 

 

Bruce was silent. 

 

“How badly does it hurt?” Diana asked, calmly. 

 

Bruce looked at her slowly. “I don’t sleep unless drugged anymore.”

 

Diana nodded. “I have what I need. I trust you will rest?”

 

“Don’t take it off.”   
  


“The lasso?” she asked. “Because it works as a painkiller.”

 

Bruce’s eyes were closed. “I just want to go to sleep for once,” he rasped. “And other painkillers don’t work anymore.” 

 

Clark made a sound as if he’d been wounded, and then he was crawling in the bed beside Bruce, pulling him close—it seemed the lasso impaired Clark’s impulse control, as well as his ability to lie. 

 

Diana’s heart twisted at the sight. “Of course.” 

 

She bent down, pressed a kiss to both of their heads, and then eased herself into a chair and stood watch over them both. 

  
  



	6. bruce & alfred

“Give the roots a little shake,” Alfred instructed, guiding Bruce’s hands over a pot-shaped clump of dirt, shot through with bright yellow roots. The flower, like the others, had been quite ready to escape its container. “Gently, sir.” Bruce focused on kneading the dry dirt carefully, avoiding the larger root systems —but Alfred heard the occasional snap of sensitive plant tissue, and winced over Bruce’s nappy head. 

 

(The boy truly was in desperate need of a trim. If only Alfred could get the lad to remain still; but the second he sat the boy down in a chair to give his hair a trim, Bruce was scrambling down, disappearing into one of the winding staff hallways, the patter of his feet growing quieter and quieter. He seemed to have preternatural sense of when Alfred would put the scissors down, because that’s when he’d slink back, staring hard at his shoes like Alfred wouldn’t notice he’d run off if he didn’t look Alfred in the face. )

 

A shower of dry, feathery dirt had speckled over the rich black potting soil they’d laid down; Bruce dug in with his gloved hands to make a little dent, the way he had for the last three plants, and Alfred eased their newest  _ trillium grandiflorum _ into the ground. 

 

“Now bury it. Mind the leaves, child.”

 

Bruce huffed—a lock of his hair flicked with the rush of air, and Alfred fought to the urge to smooth it down—but dug into the plastic bag of potting soil with a dirt-covered cup and dumped it around the flower. Bruce filled his cheeks with air, looking rather like a chipmunk, and blew the excess dirt off of the leaves, throwing up a plume of it in Alfred’s face. Alfred primly dusted off his shirt. 

 

“M’sorry,” Bruce mumbled. 

 

Alfred tapped two fingers underneath his chin, tilting his head back. “Enunciate your words when you talk, Master Bruce. Else I’ll have to invest in a hearing aid early.”

 

Bruce muttered something unintelligible and Alfred ignored a stab of annoyance—he had  _ just _ told the boy to speak up, hadn’t he?—and packed the dirt in. Alfred cupped his hands and pushed the dry pine needles that covered the garden over the fresh soil, and then dusted his gloves off on his work pants. 

 

It had been an odd afternoon. The weather itself was wonderful, by all means grand, at twenty-one degrees; the sun was pouring down and the clover was lush and green and buzzing with bees. The trees were just budding with new green-growth, in that light, gentle color yet untested by the elements. It was a day of days, a genuinely good day after a long, harsh winter. 

 

It was made odd by his tiny charge. 

 

“I’m certain you very well remember me,” Alfred had said sometime back in January, folding his coat over his lap and helping himself to the chair closest to the door. 

 

Penelope Richards looked at him as if he were hiding a viper beneath his coat. “Yeah,” she said, swallowing. “I distinctly remember turning your case down because your kid tried to bite me.”

 

“He is not  _ my _ child.”

 

“Three separate times. I’ve been bitten by fussy children a lot, but no one’s ever drawn blood like that.”

 

Alfred looked at his folded hands. “He is not with me. He is with a… colleague of mine.”

 

“And Bruce is  _ her _ kid, I suppose?” Mrs. Richards said, crossing her arms. 

 

“Of course not,” Alfred said. He suddenly felt defensive. “Of course not. I am the primary guardian.”

 

Mrs. Richards looked at him very seriously over her glasses. “If you want to schedule a family therapy appointment, I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else. Mr. Pennyworth, I’m expecting a patient in ten minutes. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”   
  


Alfred ground his teeth. “Mrs. Richards. I simply need advice. Bruce is—he’s—withdrawn. I can’t get him to eat. I can’t get him to sleep, and when he collapsed he has night terrors the likes of which you’ve never… good Lord, the lad won’t let me touch him even to check for fever, when he used to—well.”

Alfred cut himself off. He was afraid his bastard throat might betray him, the way it was tightening, like a drum.

 

Mrs. Richards sighed. “Be patient. Try to engage him in something neutral—something he has no past association with, something he can do with you. Something that can draw him out of his own head a bit.”

 

Alfred nodded, soaking in the words, repeating them back to himself to remember them.    
  


“Now, seriously, get out. I wasn’t kidding about having a patient. Next time, make an actual appointment, instead of ambushing me during lunch.” 

 

That was how Alfred had decided upon a garden, one of their own, one untouched by the gardeners who came infrequently to care for the estate—Bruce had always enjoyed watching the gardens be cared for, and Alfred—a love for watching things grow was maybe the one pure thing he shared with his mother. It brought him a sense of peace. Perhaps, for Bruce, it would do the same. 

 

It had been an odd afternoon, but not terribly so. Bruce was soft-spoken, but sometimes Alfred doubted Bruce would ever raise his voice to a yell—or even an authoritative snarl. The boy hadn’t screamed properly since he was a baby. His tantrums since were all very quiet, silent tears streaming down his cheeks, his face twisted into a desperate wail. Bruce was soft-spoken, but he’d stopped avoiding Alfred’s gaze as much, and that—that made Alfred’s heart positively soar. 

 

“What do you think of cookies tonight, my boy?” Alfred said. He had to stop his hand from coming down to clap Bruce’s thin shoulder. “I should think we can find a suitable recipe from the library—we’ve rather a lot of cookbooks.”

 

Bruce looked up at him, expression placid. He nodded slowly and then trotted off to the open kitchen door. 

 

“Your boots, Master Bruce!” 

 

“Okay,” Bruce said, sounding rather cheeky. But he toed off his rubber boots all the same, leaving them just outside the door, with his tiny black gardening gloves laid carefully over top. 

 

Alfred watched the empty doorway long after Bruce had disappeared through it, thinking nothing but the word progress, a wide cheek-to-cheek grin stolen over his face. Then he rose, and followed. He changed quickly into a button-down and black pants—he knew from experience Bruce could be rather impatient where sweets were concerned, and Alfred was eager to enjoy the sunshine before the clouds returned. 

 

Bruce was waiting for him in the kitchen, sitting on the island with his feet in one of the chairs. 

 

“Hop down,” Alfred said. Bruce did so with a scowl. “Now sit in the chair as you ought.” Bruce’s scowl intensified, but he pushed himself into the chair anyway.

 

Alfred moved around the island to pull a cookbook from the cabinet above the stove—a book of deserts. Alfred referenced it often, since Bruce was rather fond of sweets, and they seemed to be the only thing he would reliably eat. 

 

Alfred propped it open on the island. Bruce stretched forward in his chair to look at the book, his eyes widening as Alfred flipped through it, but he gasped aloud when Alfred reached a recipe for pumpkin cookies.

 

“Can we grow pumpkins?” he asked, quietly. 

 

Alfred chuckled. “Of course, child. Pumpkin cookies it shall be.” He moved to the cabinets and started pulling down ingredients. “Lad, will you run to the refrigerator and get me the eggs?”

 

The styrofoam carton screeched as it slid on the counter beside his hip. “Oh, you’ve already—excellent.”

 

Unconsciously, Alfred patted Bruce’s head, and Bruce made a noise like a stabbed dog and Alfred jerked away. Alfred was already scrambling for an apology when Bruce latched onto Alfred’s arm and clung there, mumbling nonsense words frantically. 

“Bruce, it’s all right,” Alfred said, bending close so Bruce could hear him over his own babbling. “Forgive me, my dear, forgive me. I did not mean to—”

 

Bruce’s mumbles solidified into their own, singular word: “Please.”   
  


Alfred froze. And then he knelt down, and held Bruce out at arm’s length. “Child,” he said, and he tried to make his voice as comforting as he could, “can you tell me quite what you are thinking?”

 

Bruce looked as if Alfred had grown another head. 

 

“Make an attempt. For me,” Alfred said. 

 

Bruce opened his mouth, closed it. Tried again. Then he got out the syllable, “It—” and stopped abruptly. “It was too nice,” Bruce whispered. “It was too nice. They wouldn’t like it. They wouldn’t—they wouldn’t like it.”

 

Alfred’s heart ached. Bruce had stopped looking him in the eye, was just looking down at the tile floor, and the look on his face was so heartbroken Alfred would never forget it. “Your parents?” he asked.

 

“Am I forgetting them because it was nice,” Bruce said in a rush. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

 

“Slow down,” Alfred said, squeezing Bruce’s shoulder. “Oh, my boy. Your parents would not have wanted you to suffer—oh, my child.”

 

Months, it had been months of Bruce ducking away from Alfred, of maintaining such a distance; nearly a year, and this whole time, had it truly been some misguided belief? Some misguided belief that it could not and would not ever be good again, else he’d forget his parents’ memories—or was it meaner than that? Was it possible Bruce believed he’d deserved it, for whatever gross misconstruction of a reason? 

 

Alfred tipped Bruce’s head up with a finger. “Bruce,” he said. “Look at me.”

 

Bruce did. He was crying, now, little silvery tears cutting down his cheeks. 

 

“You deserve to be loved,” Alfred said, simply and finally, in his most serious voice. “Do you understand?”

 

Bruce didn’t answer. Bruce didn’t answer, but, for the first time in months, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Alfred, shuddering with sobs as he did so. Alfred stroked his tangly hair and shushed him, rocking him back and forth there on the kitchen floor, but Bruce didn’t answer. 


	7. bruce/selina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this one gets a preface of - I really like Godzilla, and I made Batman fight King Ghidorah-lite because I can. Also Bruce loses a limb, because I wrote this a h/c for @audreycritter, who collects lost Batman limbs like she collects stamps. It's also unedited, because fuck, man, how much time can I spend on a fic where Batman fights King Ghidorah?

“I wish,” Bruce growled, “you would get off my building.”

 

His words were lost to the wind. He was thrown into the air by the force of the dragon’s tail—below him, it bellowed and a column of white-hot flame spilled out of its teeth and into the street below. He had reason to believe the sail that spiraled down the dragon’s spine was attached to its vertebrae, based on their immobile, strangely stiff posture—spinosaurus-like. Bruce aimed his grapple at the sail, and the sharp point of the grapple head pierced the stretched skin in a spray of blood and hooked around the bone, pulling Bruce down with a jerk he felt deep in his shoulder. Bruce fisted his other hand in his cape and pulled it wide so it caught the wind and gave him a small amount of control over his drop.

 

Bruce hit the dragon’s golden back with a fleshy thump. The scales were hard and sharp and shredded the soles of his boots like they were made of butter. Bruce unhooked his grapple and stabbed an explosive batarang into the dragon’s bone, but as he was fumbling with the detonator in one hand and preparing to swing away in the other, the beast shuddered so hard Bruce tipped forward and slid down the side of its belly. As he fell, he fired his grapple again into the dragon’s sail. 

 

The dragon reared and beneath Bruce, bones began to shift and muscles began to split open and tear apart; and as he watched in fascinated horror, the dragon grew two new heads from the stumps of its shoulders, each dripping with blood and greeting the world with an ear-splitting, heart-rattling roar. 

 

“I should not have gotten out of bed this morning,” Bruce muttered.

 

A head snapped around and fixed him with glowing red eyes, and Bruce barely dodged the teeth snapping at his legs—as long as it was focused on him, and not the civilians in the street. Bruce smashed a button on his grapple gun and the line zipped upwards, but Bruce’s vision tunneled into white as pain barreled into him like a steam engine and flames curled and whipped up and down his right hip and thigh. The kevlar melted and smoked and mingled with dripping flesh in seconds. 

 

Bruce roared and flung a batarang blindly, hitting the dragon just above its left eye—in seconds, he had launched another one, this time into the valve where the flame seemed to shoot from—hell, he hoped he was right—

 

The dragon’s mouth spread open, its tongue curled, and then its head exploded into flame. It shrieked and swung wildly, bits of its flesh swirling to the ground in burning chunks. He was right—there was a muscle in the throat that controlled the fire so it never touched the skin, but the inside of their mouths was not fireproof. 

 

Bruce’s thumb flipped the cap of the detonator, his vision going black at the edges, and then teeth clamped around his leg and he smashed the button and the last thing he remembered, the very last thing, was thinking  _ I can’t believe I fought King Ghidorah _ before he hit the water. 

 

-

 

The bed he was in was comfortable. But it wasn’t his. 

 

“You’ve made a mistake,” he hissed, or tried to. It sounded more like, _ youff made uh stake. _

 

“Don’t get your kevlar in a twist, it’s just me,” the rafters answered, in a familiar voice that hit him like a sword to the chest. 

 

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to. Bruce should’ve known who he was dealing with from the thread count alone; Selina had always preferred the softest sheets money could buy.

 

The rafters shudder and Selina jumped down, landing with a thud. She was still in her costume, her goggles still covering her face, and it felt like another layer of distance between them, another wall to cross. The goggles were reflective and he could see the bed he was in—California king, dark comforter, a white cat curled up on top of the headboard. The exit was behind him, to the left. 

 

“You can try and leave if you want but you’ve been out for a few days,” she said. “Hasn’t exactly been easy, keeping you alive.”

 

“Al,” Bruce rasped. 

 

“You can go back to him whenever, I don’t care.” She slipped the goggles off and pulled back her half-cowl, and Bruce’s heart ached for her; she looked maybe as bad as he felt. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the shadows beneath them were dark, and now that he was looking, she might have lost weight since he had seen her last. She would still look lovely in her wedding dress. 

 

“Selina.”   
  


“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snarled. “Don’t pity me. I saved your _ life.” _

 

He coughed. His chest burned—cuts, from the scales, burns scrawled tight and harsh across his skin. 

His shoulder ached. His back throbbed. Even his teeth seemed to hurt, at their roots, but his left leg—it was—odd, somehow, a floating kind of pain that stung all the worse for its flight. He remembered the dragon rising off of the Wayne Enterprises building, its two legs and tails limp and dead, howling as it barreled through the skies and crashed into the bay—all the worse, for its flight. 

 

“What happened,” he said. He wanted to sit up, but he knew from experience that the kind of pain he lived now was settled in, and if he jostled it, woke it, he would scream.

 

“You killed a dragon,” Selina answered. She sent a furtive look to the end of the bed, and then sat down just on the edge, near his hip. Bruce wanted to run his hands through her wild hair, press a kiss into it. It was pathetic, he knew; left at the altar, and still madly in love with the person who had left him there. 

 

“Before that,” Bruce said. “I don’t… remember.” 

 

She smirked. “You were on fire.” 

 

The smile faded when Bruce didn’t return it. He was too busy wondering if he’d been stabbed, the way his chest hurt. 

 

“There was an explosion, and later reports said you paralyzed the thing from the waist down. It took off to the bay but the middle head, apparently the dominant one, was fried and you crashed into the water near East End. I was watching, I fished you out.”

 

Bruce huffed. “I killed King Ghidorah and all I got were new scars. Hn.”

 

Selina didn’t raise a brow, or comment on the reference; she only looked stricken, as if he had reached up and slapped her. 

 

“Selina,” Bruce said, lowly. “What aren’t you telling me.”

 

She turned away from him, looking at the hands folded in her lap. “Dick paid me a visit, after I… left. He was angry. The angriest I’ve ever seen him, and it was hard to look at him and think he might’ve been little, once, he was so angry. He wanted to know why, and I said I am what I am and told him to leave. He was disgusted with me.” 

 

Bruce didn’t answer. He could see it, himself, Dick’s righteous outrage, hear his shouts ringing off the walls. For a while, that had been his relationship with his eldest. 

 

“He said that if what I am hurts other people, I need to change.” She rubbed a hand across her face. “You were so devastated by what I did to you, your son came to tell me to shape up. I messed up, and I messed up because I couldn’t see past myself. I’m sorry.”

 

Bruce reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder, and from the tips of his fingers to the root of his shoulder, he felt nothing but a searing, evil pain. “We’re even,” he gasped out. “You saved my life.”

 

“Lay back down,” she snapped, tucking his arm back beneath the blanket. “Do you know how much stitching I did to keep you together? You’re like a damn handmade baby blanket I’d give as a gift for a baby shower.”

 

“Sorry,” he said. 

 

Her face softened. She smoothed back his hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead, and anger, and love, and hurt boiled in his stomach. “Now we both have something to apologize for,” she said, after she got a glimpse of his expression.

 

“What I’m saying is,” she continued. “I don’t want to be the kind of person that keeps hurting you. I left because I didn’t deserve you, but leaving is what made me not deserve you, and—I did it again. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t get there in time.”

 

Bruce closed his eyes. “Selina.”

 

“I’m so sorry. I—it wasn’t there when I found you.”

 

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut. The swirling fear at the back of his brain came viciously to life; the offness, the floating, the stabbing pain of it despite the fact it didn’t feel as if it were there at all. It wasn’t. When the dragon had bit into him and thrown him, it had taken his leg with it. 

 

The pain became more real now that the truth was there in front of him in all its ugliness. Tears that filled him with shame pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he turned his face away from Selina, desperate for—for privacy, desperate to be alone, desperate for the pain to go away, desperate to get his damn  _ leg _ back. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

 

Bruce gritted his teeth. “So am I,” he growled. 

 

Her arms wound around him. For a moment, Bruce paused. He wanted to scream, and not ten seconds before he had wanted to scream at her; but now the fight was leaving him and he was burying his head into her shoulder, sobbing hard enough to shake them both and pull at the wounds that crawled all over him.

 

“Sh,” Selina said, her hand curled at the base of his neck and rubbing small circles there with her index finger. Her cheek was pressed into his hair. “I haven’t called Alfred yet. No one except me and Leslie knows.”

 

Bruce sucked in a shaky breath. “Leslie?”

 

“She helped. I know you two have history, but, dammit—I was not about to let your father take care of your missing leg,” she said. Their foreheads were pressed together, now, and they were breathing in time. 

 

“I missed you,” Bruce whispered. He felt raw and flayed, he felt pathetic for saying it—but damn him, he did. He had to close his eyes again because ice formed in his throat that he could scarcely breathe around. 

 

“Oh, baby,” Selina said. 

 

“I am going to ask you to do something,” Bruce said. “I want you to marry me. I don’t give a damn if you’re marrying half of me, I want to marry you. For once in your life, do something because I asked you.”

 

Selina stared at him. She pulled a tissue from the box on her nightstand and blew her nose, and then pulled another and wiped away her tears. “We have a lot to work out,” she said, carefully. 

 

“Learning on the job,” Bruce grunted. 

 

“Are you sure immediately after finding out you lost the bottom half of your leg is the appropriate time to propose,” she said. “Temporary insanity, and all.” 

 

“It’s a yes or no question,” Bruce said. 

 

“Yes,” she said, simply. 

 

She kissed his forehead again and then swallowed hard, pushing herself up. “Fuck. Fuck. You, you need rest. Me, I’m going… I’m going to… just get some rest.”

 

Bruce held her eyes and patted the bed beside him. Slowly, unsure, as unsure as Bruce had ever seen her, Selina slid into the place next to him, and he leaned his head against her shoulder. He was asleep not long after, but he had the clearest memory of Selina’s thumb brushing over his scarred knuckles, and vaguely wondering what that would feel like when he was wearing a ring. 


	8. bruce & dick

It rained through the week. It started in on Monday afternoon with a cold drizzle and graduated to a downpour later that night; Monday afternoon also happened to be the time Dick was asked by a coworker to watch over his kids, pushing his conference call with the Titans until midnight that night. He called in sick to work on Tuesday and spent the entire day in the mask, investigating a recent string of murders that looked to be a shoddy cover-up of something bigger and uglier. Wednesday, he investigated those same murders in a different suit, and Thursday he spent catching up on paperwork—BPD, Titans, casework for his own files, just about every type of paperwork under the sun—and Friday he’d been planning to be in Gotham. A handful of emergencies pushed that day back to Sunday, and, somehow, it was still raining. A light sprinkle, but rain coming down nonetheless.

 

Batman met him at the corner of Dini and Timm. Dick’s motorcycle slowed to a stop; he flicked the kickstand up with the toe of his boot, and slid off, the cycle listing to one side as he did so. “Sorry I’m late. Rain yadda yadda, overslept yadda yadda, pick the excuse you want to hear—what’s that?”

 

Batman was leaned against the hood of his car, ankles crossed, picking at the knuckle of his right gauntlet. Dick watched him pluck a piece of hair that had been stuck to a clot of drying blood and examine it in the low light of the lamppost. “What is left,” he said, “of a man who snapped the neck of his four-year-old.”   
  


Dick gritted his teeth. There was a special place in Hell down below, he told himself. A special place, far down below. His temples throbbed with the motion but the anger beating in his veins didn’t particularly care.

 

Bruce flicked his hand down the street. “Follow me,” he said, and pushed himself off the hood of the Batmobile, and slid into the front seat. The Batmobile roared down the street without another line of direction from Bruce, and Dick swallowed his irritation. He assumed they’d be heading to the Cave, where Dick could take a blistering hot shower and knock out on the couch for twelve hours, and if they were heading to a crime scene, well, Dick had half a mind to shout  _ sayonara, Batman, I’m taking a vacation to somewhere it never fucking rains for a week! Suck it! _

 

The rain picked up as Dick followed him. By the time they made it to the Cave, the rain was sliding down in sheets that glittered in the headlights. 

Dick pulled in beside the Batmobile and shook his head like a dog fresh out of the bath, peeling off his mask in one easy, practiced motion. 

 

“You need to wear a helmet,” Bruce growled as he stalked—and stalked was the word for it, because the motion of it was predatory, smooth and dangerous—to the chair in front of the Batcomputer. 

 

“And I also need to call Leslie,” Dick said. 

 

Bruce didn’t respond; he was pulling up a blank document, typing furiously. 

 

“You’re supposed to ask ‘what for’,” Dick whined. He dipped down to touch his toes with the flat of his palm—if he could get his blood flowing, he could maybe get rid of this damn headache. “And then I’m supposed to say, ‘so she can surgically remove whatever crawled up your ass and died.’”

 

Bruce snorted. It was an annoyed kind of huffing snort; it reminded him of the horses in the circus, tossing their brilliant white heads and stamping their hooves. “Very funny.” 

 

Dick straightened and then dropped his hands onto the ground behind him, stretching his core. He held the position for several minutes, during which Bruce had wheeled his chair around and was staring at him with blank, cold lenses. When Dick noticed, he scrambled upright.

 

“What was I saying,” he said, flatly. 

 

Dick winced. He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “Oh, you were just talking about how much you love and adore me and appreciate my presence in your life, and that if I were to ever zone out while you were talking you’d forgive me instantly.”

 

It was a gamble. With the mood Bruce was in, it could either crack the ice or send it all spiralling into the next ice age—and Dick desperately hoped it was the former, because there was a jackhammer living in his skull, and Dick had the distinct feeling that it was about to turn into a migraine. Just his luck. 

 

After a minute of awkward, choking silence, Dick sighed, and rubbed at his eyes. “Listen, would you mind doing this in the morning? I’m beat. I mean, really beat. It’s been—a hell of a week. I just need three hours, an’ I’ll be good to go.”

 

Bruce rose, slowly, and then walked to stand in front of Dick. He took Dick by the chin and tilted his face from side-to-side, and then finally he smoothed back Dick’s wet hair with a gloved hand. “Go and change. I’ll get a towel.” 

 

“I sleep with wet hair all the time.” 

 

Bruce ruffled Dick’s hair again. He muttered something that sounded like, “heathen boy,” which reminded Dick so much of Alfred his heart jumped and twisted. 

 

Bruce followed him to the other side of the Cave and disappeared into the linen closet, while Dick quickly changed in the showers. He was pulling on a t-shirt when Bruce found him, one of his arms piled with fluffy white towels. 

 

His arm snaked out and grabbed one of Dick’s wrists. “What’s this,” he said, thunderously. 

 

“Uh, my arm?”

 

Bruce’s arm dropped to thumb at an ugly, sickle-shaped scar crawling along Dick’s side, silvery-white. “This.” 

 

“Oh.” Dick’s ears flushed pink. “Been busy. Titans.”

 

Bruce had pulled the cowl down, and it was funny, how Dick was only now realizing that. Sometimes there was almost no difference between his face and the one he chose; they were both equally closed off and hard as granite, but it was funny, how Dick was only noticing the cowl was missing just in time to see Bruce look like he’d been gutted. 

 

Dick pulled his shirt down and coughed from deep in his throat. “Yeah, well, I’m all healed up.”

 

Bruce was still staring at the spot on Dick’s shirt that had covered the crawling scar. “Yes,” he said, hoarsely. Then he blinked and his eyes seemed to come into focus, meeting Dick’s gaze again. “Yes. Well. You’ve a towel for your costume, and one for your hair.” 

 

Dick snagged one, and folded it around his suit. He tried not to look at Bruce’s face as Bruce turned away, but he snuck a glance he couldn’t help, and he found it normal. Gruff, a bit tired, maybe, but nothing like the way his eyes had widened and his brows had bunched together. 

 

“Hey,” Dick called, when Bruce was at the doorway. 

 

Bruce turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised in question. 

 

_ You’re not like someone who snaps their four-year-old’s neck just because I got injured in a line of work you introduced me to. I’m an adult. I chose this,  _ is what Dick should have said. It was what he had wanted to say, possibly what he needed to say. 

 

“Got any ibuprofen?” was the weak substitute he went with. 

 

Bruce nodded, sharply, and left. Dick toweled off his hair quickly and left his towel on the rack and his suit on the shower bench. He jogged past the door, calling out, “Bruce, wait—” and then ran right into Bruce’s chest.

 

“Oof,” was Bruce’s response, and he looked about as surprised as Dick did. They stared at each other, blinking, and then Bruce handed Dick a water bottle and two pills. 

 

“Thanks,” Dick mumbled, popping the pills and swallowing them dry. 

 

Bruce frowned, and thrust the water bottle forward. Dick took it, said, “thanks,” again, although this time it was much quieter, and chugged half of it. The jackhammer that lived in Dick’s skull seemed to pick up the pace just to spite him. 

 

“You need more than three hours.”

 

Dick shrugged. “Don’t exactly have the time for it. Listen, back there—”

 

“You have the time now,” Bruce said. “And you will use it. You’ve a bed upstairs. I suggest you get in it, and stay in it, and I will not find you elsewhere for the next ten hours.” 

 

Dick glared at him. “Okay, Captain Hypocrite, that’s nice. Except for the part where—”

 

“For Christ’s sake, will you stop sounding like me,” Bruce growled. 

 

Dick shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clicked together. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m sleeping on the cot.”

 

“If you would like to sleep in a damp cave instead of on several thousand dollar sheets, God help you, but I will not stop you.”

 

Then Bruce was turning around, crossing over to the cot and tossing back the corner, fluffing the pillow. “Is this,” he said. “Hn. Is this—wanting to sleep down here. Is this because of nightmares.”

 

“No, no, I’m not twelve. Just tired. Headachy.” 

 

Bruce settled on the cot, and patted the space beside him. “Sit with me.” 

 

Dick hauled himself up beside Bruce and leaned his cheek on Bruce’s shoulder, feeling the sharp throb of his headache lessen as he did so, feeling the tension in him begin to melt as he did so. “I just kept telling everyone ‘yeah, yeah, I can do that’ and now I feel like shit because I can’t.” 

 

Bruce was quiet long enough that Dick was starting to doze off. Then he said, “I  _ do  _ love you,” his voice just a rumble in his chest, and tucked a lock of Dick’s hair behind his ear.

 

“I was really looking forward to the adore part, actually.” 

 

Bruce chuckled, and swatted his head. “Go to sleep, chum.” 

 

And sleep he did, finally. 


End file.
